A PLEA FOR HARDY PLANTS 



ii 



plants. Think of the pity of it, that all this enormous annual expenditure 

 should be wasted an expenditure that leaves our gardens in the fall 

 exactly as it found them in the spring, bare earth, and nothing in it. 



Is it because the people prefer bedding plants to hardy ones? You 

 who know hardy plants know that this is not so. Who would prefer, 

 let us say, a bed of coleuses or geraniums to a fine group of rhodo- 

 dendrons, or azaleas, or Lilium auratum, or Japanese anemones, or to 

 the hundreds of fine things to be had in hardy shrubs and plants? 

 Any one of these has a beauty incomparably greater than can be pro- 

 duced with the most lavish use of bedding plants. Then the bedding 

 plants are a yearly expense, while an investment in hardy plants and 

 shrubs returns the investor an annual dividend in increased size and 

 loveliness. Every dollar spent for them secures a permanent addition 



AZALEA NUDIFLORA 



